


New Age Cowboy

by SF3P0X1



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:06:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SF3P0X1/pseuds/SF3P0X1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been ten years. Ten years since Spike finally brought down Vicious, seemingly at the cost of his own life. Now, the Cowboy is being resurrected, for his help is sorely needed against a more destructive enemy.</p><p>Discontinued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Reanimation

_Pain coursed through my body as I hobbled down those never-ending stairs, my arms wrapped around my gut while the wound from Vicious’ sword threatened to bleed out. The gash his blade left was wide enough to let my intestines cascade through, but I held them in place as best I could as I made my way to the bottom floor. My eyes were focused on the ground as I struggled to maintain consciousness, but I knew it would soon be of little use. I lifted my head one final time, gazing upon the crowd of suits below me, each with shock registered on their faces, and I smirked. With my fist raised I extended my thumb and index finger towards them, and then whispered the one word I swore to be my last._

 _“Bang.”_

 _I felt my life draining from me as my body fell to the ground. I hit the stairs and lay there, completely motionless. I smacked my head against the stairs and busted my nose, but I had not the strength to even mutter a word of pain; I barely even felt the impact. There was no movement, no sound… not even a breath of wind that could distract me from the loneliness and darkness that I knew was coming on ever so swiftly. My limbs grew cold as my blood spilled from my wound, puddling below me and coagulating as only blood can. My eyes closed and my breath became a steady, yet strained, rattle as my lungs began to shut down. I breathed my final breath, slipping from the grips of reality._

 _Am I… dead?_

 _Was it all… a dream?_

Something has jarred me from my slumber…

Movement… sound… light…

I feel alive again, but I am unable to move.

Why is it so cold here?

My eyes opened, but all I could see was water; water so blue it hurt the eyes. The liquid clung to my eyelids and lashes. I strained against the liquid, struggling to see outside of it, but it was no use. I tried to lift my hands but they would not cooperate. Not even a single finger would move no matter how hard I willed them. I opened my mouth but water rushed in, muffling every word that I tried to shout and threatening to drown me, to take away this new bit of life that I had just begun clinging to. My legs refused to move as I floated, suspended in this watery grave. I could hear nothing but the sloshing of water around me, and the beating of my own heart. For the first time in many years, fear overtook me.

And then… voices.

“He’s awake! Drain that NeOxygen, hurry!” one shouted.

There was a rush of feet, the lights shifting and twisting as figures moved in front of them, and soon I felt the liquid drain from around me. In the absence of the liquid my glass canister-like prison was revealed. I tried to turn my head to look around, but unable to get it to move I had to be content with just moving my eyes. I saw white lab coats and face masks; people in doctors’ uniforms were rushing around, some observing me from the side of my prison, others staring intently at screens full of blips and beeps. I continued to attempt to move, but my limbs were just not speaking the same language. I felt like a zombie. I looked up at a doctor and opened my mouth, but no words came out. My throat was dry and my eyes full of water. Nothing felt right.

The main doctor motioned to a nurse sitting at a computer terminal. She nodded and pressed a few buttons, reading the output. Smiling, she turned back to the doctor and me.

“Everything is reading off the charts. His reanimation has been successful, Doctor White.”

“Good,” he replied. Then he turned to me. “Perhaps after a good night’s rest and a meal or two your body will have recovered enough for you to use your motor functions, eh, Cowboy?”

 _Cowboy?_

 _Cowboy… bounty hunter…_

 _Where was the Bebop…?_

I struggled to use my voice, but it was just no use. The effort I used exhausted me and I finally collapsed, closing my eyes for what I figured to be a long night’s rest.


	2. CH1: Where There's Smoke...

_Red._

 _Black._

 _Red._

 _Black._

 _“Alert. The hospital is under attack. Doctors and patients report directly to the underground bunker and remain there until further notice. Alert.”_

I finally open my eyes. There is a strange red light that has popped down from the ceiling in the room where I have been placed, and it is flashing on and off, changing the colors in the room from white to red and back again. Every few minutes a female voice can be heard throughout the building, saying the hospital was under attack.

My arms had been chained to the bed and an IV had been inserted in one of them. I followed the line from the needle insertion to the bag, watching as a strange blue liquid drained silently into my body. I felt refreshed, alive, and finally my limbs worked.

I moved my head around to get a better view of my surroundings, ignoring the red light and the automated voice. My bed had been set up against a short wall, the back propped up so that should I awake I wouldn’t have to move much to look around. To my right and against the wall was a small table where a tray of food had been left, the contents of which were contained three donuts, a cup of gelatin, and a small cheese omelet, all half eaten, as well as a half drank glass of milk. Two small chairs were against the table, one of which seemed to have been used recently.

 _I must have had a visitor._

I moved my head to the left, seeing what I expected to see; an IV stand with the bag of blue liquid and a monitor to watch the beat of my heart. Its steady beep beep beep was beginning to get on my nerves. On the other side of the heart monitor was the sole window in the room, half obscured by the piece of machinery. The curtain was up, but there wasn’t much to be seen through the smoke outside.

Looking over the foot of my bed, I could see the door set in the far wall, with a small slit of a window for doctors to peek in and check on the patients. The door was set close to the right wall, and to the left of the door was a simple counter and sink, meant to be used with the toilet set behind the curtain next to it.

Everything in this room was white, so it was relatively freaky when the red light flashed, turning everything blood red. Not a poster graced the walls, and nothing had been left in the room to remind me of who it was that had visited me while I was sleeping. I reached with my right hand towards the food that had been left, and managed to take hold of an untouched donut lying closest to the bed. It was jelly filled, and I didn’t really like those, but it was better than nothing.

They say hunger is the best seasoning. If that is true, then sickness must be a rich man’s remorse, because that donut was the best thing I had ever tasted. My taste buds felt as if I had not used them in years, and every ingredient in the donut came out, right down to the last grain of sugar used in the bread. I could only manage to take one bite, as the assault of flavors was too intense for me. I nearly lost my stomach.

I set the donut down on the tray and rubbed my eyes lightly, getting powdered sugar on my face and eyelashes. The red light continued to flash, and it was making me dizzy. I had never been one to be epileptic, but I guess there was a first time for everything. I tried to close my eyes and lose the red in the sea of black, but the light shined right through. I started getting sick to my stomach and leaned over the side of the bed, intending to litter the floor with my vomit so that I did not have to sit in it myself.

Suddenly the door creaked and slammed open, and in rushed a doctor and two nurses. Their eyes were wide with fear, and through the open doorway I could see doctors wheeling patients down the hallway quicker than I ever thought possible. One of the nurses had brought a wheelchair with her, intending that I be sat in it. The other nurse and the doctor lined up on either side of me, taking me under the arms and lifted me from my bed, placing me gently in the chair. The doctor unhooked the IV from my arm and left it on the bed, placing a cloth over the IV wound to stem the flow of blood from where the IV had once been.

The doctor took hold of the back of the chair and pushed me out of the room silently. His face looked so afraid I wondered if he was able to speak at all. We entered the flow of hallway traffic carefully, and then we rushed down the halls. The red light was everywhere, but the announcement of attacks seemed to be long gone, replaced by a blaring alarm that reminded me of early 21st century alarm clocks.

The turns we made were too numerous to count. This place was huge! I wondered silently to myself if this were even a building... maybe the hospital was an entire city or an entire country, maybe even an entire planet. Finally, the doctor stopped outside of a large steel doorway, in a crowd of other doctors, patients, and even some visitors. The door opened and a large space was revealed, with a hologram of a woman standing in doctor’s robes in front of the doorway. Her image was in black and white, and it fluttered every now and then, as if the signal for the message were either old or it was being disrupted.

“Please come this way, into the bunkers. Please do not panic, this is most likely a drill,” she would repeat every so often.

The surge of doctors and patients moved slowly into the doorway, followed by the visitors that happened to be there with us. The entryway resembled the inside of an elevator, with a steel bar that ran around the circumference of the room. Once the entire congregation of the doctors, patients, and visitors were inside the room, the door behind us closed and one before us opened. Past the hologram I could see a long row of beds set up like 21st century military barracks, complete with the army blankets of the time.

The bunker seemed to be only halfway full as the doctor wheeled me towards a bed at about the middle of the room. Two different nurses appeared by his side to help lift me from the wheelchair onto the bed, where the doctor secured me underneath the blanket and took the wheelchair away, intending to go back for another patient.

The room was deathly quiet. You could almost feel the fear in some of the patients, but other patients were quietly sleeping. If you listened closely enough you could hear the faint _beep beep beep_ of heart monitors on some of the patients and the shuffling of feet as the visitors struggled to find the patients whom they had been visiting before the mass evacuation had begun.

A woman of tanned skin and awesome curves stopped in front of my bed. Her eyes rang in recognition, as if she knew who I was and had finally found me at last. She pulled up a chair and sat by my side, smiling wide. She wore a pair of extremely short vinyl shorts and a white cutoff t-shirt that looked too big for her. I could tell she was wearing a bra, but it was strapless because there was nothing obscuring her shoulders from what I could see. Her hair was long and orange, and it looked frizzy, as if she had been out in the humidity of Venus. A pair of large rounded goggles sat on top of her head.

The goggles jarred my memory. A kid had lived with us on the Bebop for a while, but she left before the showdown with Vicious. She had found her father and had gone to live with him. I wracked my brain trying to remember her name.

 _It was something weird… like a guy’s name. Ethan… Earl… it started with an E._

 _Edward!_

I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat was dry. I croaked a bit, and the lady in front of me offered me a glass of water. I took it in gratitude and drank it slowly, letting the water cascade down my throat and moisturize it. Setting the cup on my chest, I looked again at the woman sitting with me.

“Thank you. Do… do I know you?” I asked her directly.

“Ed should think so, Spike. It’s been ten years, though… Ed guesses Ed’s changed a bit. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about Ed?”

I fainted.


	3. CH2: In Dreams

_“Vincent!”_

 _The raven-haired woman stood behind me, a black pistol pointed in the trench-coated man’s direction. Both eyes were open and she stood with her feet shoulder width apart, both hands gripping the pistol grip and both elbows locked._

 _The man looked past me, his own silver pistol aimed at my head. He didn’t seem to recognize the woman, but obviously reacted when he heard his name erupt from the woman's mouth. He cocked a crooked grin and moved the pistol slightly, the pointer finger of his right hand pulling the trigger. I felt the bullet barely whiz past my cheek before striking the woman in the arm, causing her to fall to the ground._

 _I took this opportunity to lunge at the man, bringing my right foot up to connect with the pistol in his hands and knocking it away. As he brought his hands back up, my foot connected with the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. He rose again and I swung at him hard with my left fist, followed by my right fist, both connecting with his face. I swung again with my right hand, but he ducked my attack and came up with his right hand, jabbing his fingers into my sternum and twisting his hand._

 _I could feel his fingers digging into my ribs, and it was choking me. I could feel the blood exiting from my body, running down his arm as he twisted his hand further into my body. I tried to wrench away from his hand, but I couldn’t get my body to move correctly. Somehow, I got free and staggered to the window of the tram, whereupon I struggled to regain my breath. He grabbed me by the throat and threw me through the window, holding me against the sill._

 _He had regained the use of his weapon, which now was held against my chest. He looked into my eyes unblinkingly and smiled._

 _“What’s your name?” He asked this in a calm voice, as if the fight had done nothing to him._

 _I decided to answer him. “Spike Spiegel. Why do you need to know?” It was an honest question; he had me at my most vulnerable, ready to kill me, yet now he wanted to know my name._

 _“I’ll be seeing you in the next life.” It was his final answer, and I stared at his eyes, waiting for him to pull the trigger._

 _“Vincent!” I heard her shout… the beauty with the black hair was back. I couldn’t see her standing there, but her voice was unmistakable. He turned his head, and I could see the menace in those cold black eyes. He smiled that evil smile again and pulled the trigger. I heard the bang, but I could feel nothing except the wind as Vincent let my body fall from the tram into the cold water below. I closed my eyes and waited for the splash of cold water, but felt nothing. Something touched my shoulder, and someone called my name._

 _“Spike.”_

 _I didn’t recognize the voice. I tried to open my eyes, to stare at the receding blue sky above, but the image was getting blurry. A face was coming into view, a brown rock ceiling behind it. The goggles seemed so familiar._

 _“Spike…wake up Spike.”_

I opened my eyes and looked around. I was no longer falling from a rushing tram, but was instead lying in a semi-comfortable bed. There was no longer fresh air and blue sky, but stale filtered air and brown rock all around. The memory of the alarms and the hospital evacuating quickly returned, along with the realization that it was Edward who had been visiting me. It was Edward who had come to comfort me. It was Edward who had said it had been ten years since I had seen her last.

I ran my hand through my hair, trying to make sense of it all. How had it been ten years? I couldn’t remember anything after the fight with Vicious, other than laying on those cold cement stair and watching as my life drained from me. I remembered my thoughts as I had seen her coming towards me; I remembered thinking that she was hot, and that those clothes were excessively small for her.

She poked her head up over the top of the bed and smiled a huge smile. “You’re awake, Spike. Ed thought you had gone into a coma or something.” She came out from behind the bed where I couldn’t se her, then pulled up a chair and sat down next to my bed. She rested her arms on the bed next to my body, and then rested her chin on her fists. “Ed missed you.”

I couldn’t really say that I had missed her. She was only gone a couple of weeks before the fight with Vicious, and I hadn’t had time enough away from her to start feeling anything in the way of missing her. She seemed sincerely glad to know that I was alive and awake, though, so I gave her a quick smile, and then leaned up and wrapped my arms around her, giving her a hug.

Edward sniffled, and then threw her arms around me in return. I had never known anyone, man or woman, to give such a soft yet firm hug. We sat there in each other’s arms for a few minutes, and then she reached her head up and kissed me, something that completely caught me by surprise. I looked at her in shock, and she blushed.

“Ed’s wanted to do that for a long time now.”

She chuckled and blushed, then kissed me again, and much to both of our surprises I kissed her back. It wasn’t a romantic lover’s kiss in any sense, but just a kiss between friends. It felt so weird to do this, though… the last time we had been together, she had been a mere child of thirteen. Finally, we broke apart, and Ed sighed as she sat back in her chair.

“Thank you, Spike. Now we need to prepare to transport you to the _Bebop_.”

I snapped my head in her direction so quickly it felt like I had pulled something in my head and something was rushing into my brain. I stopped for a moment to hold my head and let the pain from it subside.

“The _Bebop_? You mean Jet’s ship?” My eyes were wide. I really hadn’t expected the _Bebop_ to hold together for another year, let alone ten years. I lay back down before I pulled anything else in surprise, and then just looked at her. “The thing’s still holding a crew?”

Edward merely nodded, but her smile had seemed to disappear at the mention of Jet’s name. I could feel that something was wrong, and that she wasn't telling me something. Before I could ask her, though, there was a loud bang and a claw-like dent appeared in the steel reinforced door through which we had come earlier.

Edward reached behind her and into her belt, pulling out one of the strangest looking weapons I have ever seen in my life. The fact that she even had a weapon was strange. I had always known Ed to be a hacker… one of the types that stays on the ship most of the time and was a fountain of computer skill and knowledge from which the rest of us took drinks.

Now here she was, standing before me with some kind of gun. The weapon was itself black, up to the barrel, which was a weird silver glowing color. It looked almost as if the barrel were some sort of concentrated laser. If I had studied my 21st century correctly, the weapon looked like and M-9 with an elongated barrel. Ed pulled out a clip of bullets from another pocket and loaded the weapon. I caught a glimpse of the bullets for a split second, and I saw that they were also of the concentrated laser look.

Ed stood up from her chair, pushing the seat back and away from her feet. I could feel the new type of fear in the room. It made every little sound stand out. The chair scraping along the floor of the bunkers seemed to take forever, but it took only five seconds.

There was another bang, and another claw mark. From what I could see where I was lying, the claw marks resembled either a praying mantis' claw, or the stinger of a scorpion’s tail. Another bang, another claw mark, and this time I heard the door rattle. The door wouldn’t stand for much longer.

Ed looked around and saw all the frightened faces. In her eyes, I could see pity and determination, but pity was the strongest emotion. Her head fell to her chest, and I could see her mouth moving, then she lifted her head once more. I figured she had been praying.

She suddenly turned to the crowd of people huddling beside themselves in fear. “Get behind me and this bed. Let me deal with this Scorpio minion.” The voice was defiant, determined, and full of confidence. It made me want to move with the crowd, just to experience it from their point of view.

I saw the crowd begin to move like waves retreating from the shore, each of them hurrying to get behind us before the door broke down. I looked towards the door, and the room got quiet. Another bang sounded, and this time the door rattled slightly, and then fell forward towards us. The sound seemed to ring so loud that it sounded from our hearts as well. I waited in my bed, my eyes peering into that still darkness, and yet I could see nothing.


	4. CH3: Into the Valley

The dust settled eventually, and we looked on into the black darkness that lingered behind the fallen steel door. I could hear the restlessness of the patients in the room, and you could almost taste the fear they seemed to have.

Ed never took her eyes off the door. She held the pistol out from her body, her elbows locked and arms straight. Her knees had bent slightly to keep the blood flowing, and she had set her feet shoulder width apart. Both eyes were open, and her breathing was relaxed and focused.

The patients seemed to hold their breath, and the room became deathly silent. I was not afraid, merely curious. What new enemy did this world have in store for me?

A slithering from the doorway interrupted my thoughts, followed by a light flapping sound, as if giant bats resided within the darkness. Ed seemed to harden at the sound, her right pointer finger wrapping silently around the trigger, ready to shoot at the first appearance of the mysterious entity. The patients behind her gasped suddenly at the sound, and many stirred, trying to run father back, as if the wall did not exist.

A flash of green caught my attention. There was a louder fluttering sound, and then another flash of green as something huge emerged from the darkness. From what I could tell, it was humanoid. It stood about seven feet tall, as much as I could see from my distance. It was pale green in color, as if it were sick to its stomach. Large bat-like wings protruded from its back, flapping noisily. Directly below the wings you could see a large tail, the tip of which resembled that of a scorpion. Two sets of arms jutted out from its sides, muscular and menacing. The two upper hands held fists, while the two lower hands held the Tiger Claw form.

The creature’s face consisted of two eyes and a mouth; the creature seemed to be without a nose. Its eyes were nothing but red slits that resembled a snake’s eyes, and its mouth hung open, allowing a forked tongue to shoot out from within, also resembling a snake. Its skin seemed oddly scaly, as if it were some form of reptile. Its legs were muscular and strange, ending in horses hooves instead of feet, and the hoof part of the foot was black as night.

A bang resounded as Ed’s weapon fired, and I could see the bullet transform mid-flight. It went from a straight laser shot to a ball of light. The ball moved slowly, almost carelessly, towards the target, and yet the creature seemed to be possessed by the light and made no effort to move out of the way. Soon the light ball connected with the target and enveloped it completely. There was a light hissing noise as the creature seemed to melt before our eyes, and soon it was nothing more than a puddle of mush on the floor. Steam rose from the pile; it was light red in color.

There was a light clicking noise as Ed reloaded her weapon. The cartridge she removed from the loader looked like a normal bullet cartridge, except that it wasn’t smoking as most would. In fact, I heard Ed whisper, as she dropped it to the ground, that the casing was freezing.

Ed readied the pistol-like weapon, again pointing it towards the door. We listened again, and more slithering noises came from the impenetrable darkness. A single arm shot out of the darkness, and Ed wasted no time in firing the next round towards the door. The ball of light slowly slumbered towards the darkness, the brightness radiating off it enough that we could make out the rest of the room. Ed began her reload cycle, but my eyes stayed with the ball until it went through the doorway. A split second before it connected with the next being, I could see that there was one more to take its place.

Silence permeated the room. Ed pointed her pistol towards the door once more, a fresh round waiting patiently in the barrel. We stared at the dark doorway as whole minutes passed us by, unnoticed.

Suddenly, a large crash echoed from the dark hallway, and the door that had been blown in was suddenly crashing towards us. Ed dived to the right, and I had to roll left off my bed to avoid it. I didn’t look to where the door was headed, but I knew there had been an injury when I heard a sickening squishing sound, followed by a dozen screams.

As the dust settled, a light happened to flicker on. In the doorway stood another of the four-armed creatures, but this one was different. This creature wore armor on almost every inch of its body. Its face was obscured by a mask that resembled a samurai’s faceplate. In fact, it looked as if it wore samurai armor. The armor on each shoulder had three spikes, each spike nearly two feet long from what I could tell, protruding out from the shoulder plates in a triangular pattern.

In each hand it held a curved sword. The hilts were plain, roughly made, and the blades protruded from the hilts starting narrow at the base, and grew wider as it neared the top. Each blade was roughly three feet long, again I’m estimating, and the blade plus the hilt made each sword nearly four feet in length. The blades held in its lower hands were crossed over its chest, while the blades in the upper hands were held out from the body to its sides.

Its scorpion-like tail curved out from bellow its wings, and the tip was positioned above its head, pointing directly at us. There seemed to be a syrupy liquid dripping from the tip, red in color.

The creature looked around the room, snarling, but when it locked its eyes with me, it brandished its swords and jumped forward, lunging at me. Ed stepped in front of me and fired her weapon at the creature, and as the bullet floated towards it, the creature did nothing but stop and stand there, staring at the light, much like the other two had done.

As the energy struck the creature, however, something much different happened. The light seemed to bounce off the creature’s armor, ricocheting back towards us with an increased speed. I grabbed Ed and dove out of the way, the light missing us by inches. Instead, the energy struck the wall behind us. There was bright flash of light, followed by a loud splashing sound as a section of the wall liquefied and fell to the floor.

I looked up from my spot on the floor with Ed and the creature stood tall and proud over us. It sheathed one of its weapons and reached towards me, intending to grab and hoist me into the air. I rolled out of his grip, again grabbing Ed, who had lost her sense of battle to the confusion and dizziness that my rapid dodging was providing her. I stood after my roll, and turned to face the creature, which, by this time, had unsheathed his previous weapon and pointed all four swords at me, his face contorted into a very malicious growl.

  
I narrowed my eyes at him, and shook Ed out of her stupor. “Run,” I hissed, pointing her towards the hole in the wall.

She shook her head and stood, regaining her balance and her sense, and took out another weapon from her belt, her previous one long since lost under the beasts’ feet. Some sort of bar was held in her hands at this time, and when she pressed a button a light blade stuck out from both sides, much like a weapon I had seen in a twenty-first century movie called Star Wars.

“Ed was sent here to retrieve you, Spi-person. Ed would rather die than see you killed by our worst enemy.” Her words shook with a sense of pride and fear that I had yet to hear from her in my time of knowing her, past or present. She shoved me behind her roughly and took up a battle stance, holding the double-bladed bo-lightstaff in front of her.

I shook my head. _What a weird day it’s been._ I grabbed her arm, pulling my hand down over hers and pressing the button to retract the light blades. I saw the creature lunge at us, but I sidestepped its attack and pulled Ed out of the way, as well as sticking out my foot and tripping the monster. It lost its balance and fell to the ground, pulling three of its swords out of the way, but the beast landed on his fourth sword the wrong way. The weight of the creature and the momentum from its fall caused it to lop off its own head.

The crowd behind us cheered as the beast’s blood spilled from its body, but our celebration was to be short-lived. An announcement that a breach had occurred in the safety barracks had gone unnoticed during the fight, but now it was all too real.

 _Alert. Alert. There is a breach in the Safety Barracks. Hospital dome will implode in five minutes.  
_  
Five minutes… great.


End file.
